Bionic Woman: Hack Your Bionic Love

After last week’s show down, this week we are greeted with a funeral? Naughty professor, William Anthros is dead? From a shoulder wound??? I know that he and Jamie had chemistry issues but I didn’t realize that he would get the ax so soon.

Jamie goes to clean out Will’s things and finds a conveniently placed loose floor board. In the floor she finds a thick dossier on her going two years back before she and Will met. Like all of us who find out that our significant other has a file on us, Jamie goes to a bar and gets drunk. Her dialogue and emoting was off. Not only was her grief flat but her disappointment was not believable. They keep getting rid of actors around Michelle Ryan but is it them or her? I know that she’s British and it is possible that she’s has some problems emoting like an American. That doesn’t really seem to be the case because I’ve seen her in other shows and she’s a good actress. Maybe it’s me.

The scene gets even more awkward when Jamie confesses she doesn’t want Mr. Right, just Mr. Right Now. She looks over, Mr. Right Now (nee Steve) just happens to be there. In the next scene she has her tongue down his throat in the bar’s restroom. She was so rough on the guy that she broke one of his ribs. Wuss. He even whined about going to the emergency room. What is public bathroom debauchery without a few cracked ribs? Double Wuss. Dr. Macy…excuse me, Jonas Bledsoe from Wolf Creek Biotech storms in the restroom and gives her a bionic ear full. She asks about the file she found in Will’s apartment. Jonas grumbles that he’s part of a private clandestine group battling terrorism and stomping out the insurgency. He demands that she joins. She, of course, declines and upchucks in the restroom.

Becca is pulled into the principal’s office for smoking pot in the restroom of her school. Those Sommers girls sure do love their restroom antics. The principal wants to remove Becca from the school’s talent show as punishment. Jamie argues that the talent show has been a positive influence in Becca’s life and to take that away would make her backslide even more. The principal agrees. After that meeting, Becca and Jamie bicker over Becca’s living arrangements. Becca says that she is going to move back in with her dad. Frayed from just loosing her boyfriend and realizing that she has given up everything, Jamie agrees that it might be a good idea for Becca to move. Becca seems surprised by this. These two girls are in their own little world. They both are like spoiled little emo princessi that whine incessantly about how much their life sucks. When it comes to the big things — like death — both of their emotions are flat. I can’t relate to them.

Back at Wolf Creek, Jonas and Ruth are looking at security footage of a town full of dead bodies. They discuss a cover-up for a biological attack.

Earlier we learned that Jamie gave up Harvard and took a bartending job to help take care of her sister. While meeting up with her girl friends and hearing them talk about how they have moved on and progressed with their lives, Jamie gets depressed. She abruptly leaves the lunch with her friends and wanders outside. She goes to a book store and takes up reading “What Color Is Your Parachute?”. Seriously? *rolls eyes* Jamie is approached by a cute guy in the book store and has an uplifting conversation with him. After that Kumbaya, she wanders around some more. With the ringing in her ear getting worse, Jamie notices a woman trying to commit suicide. She rushes up to save her but the woman jumps anyway. Jamie catches her by the arm and pulls her to safety. Jamie goes back to the Wolf Creek facility to tell Jonas that she wants to help save people. She makes some demands. He gives her attitude. Song. Dance. Now she is officially part of the team. She is introduced to her new supervisor. Surprise, surprise! It is Antonio from the book store. He said he went undercover and approached her to see if she was working for another agency. There are other agencies? Are there other bionic people out there? Interesting …

Jamie starts her training with Jae. We also find out the main specs on Jamie. She can run 60 miles per hour, see for 2000 feet and hear 2 miles away. When they train, it looks like the same fight that Jamie had with Sarah Corvus. It’s the bionics calibration routine. Jamie and Jae do a Skywalker/Yoda on Dagobah training montage and now Jamie feels like she’s ready to handle “real” bad guys.

The biological attack took place in Paradise, Idaho, population 200, all dead. Ruth is going to go and check it out. Jonas agrees to let Jamie go with Ruth for a “test run” of her skills. Ruth thinks Jamie will slow her down but lets her go anyway. My dreams are coming true, Ruth is getting sterner. All she needs to do is speak a little Russian and she will be perfect.

As the two approach the town, they see reporters and people in hazmat suits. I didn’t understand why some people were in hazmat suits but the reporters, Jamie and Ruth were not. They seemed like useless props. Ruth and Jamie get to the triage/ morgue and take a look at the bodies. Jamie gets green and needs to barf again. Somebody needs a bionic stomach. After more poking around, Ruth realizes that the biological toxin that was released on the town was DMC30. It’s a synthetic toxin that works for a few hours then disperses. Jonas reveals that this toxin was made by Wolf Creek Biotech. He also said that he was going to call “some guys like Halliburton” to clean it up. Nice Halliburton plug. How did they manage that?

Jae gets a yellow rose and a note from Sarah Corvus wanting a reunion. He bites and pays her a visit. Being the little minx that she is, she was crouched in a seductive pose waiting for him. I couldn’t help but notice her fabulous boots. I’m sure that detail was lost on Jae. Still waving his gun around, Sarah approaches Jae and says, “You’re not gonna kill me twice are you?”. Jae softens, touches her face and love-making ensues. Afterwards, Jae asks Sarah why she killed 14 agents. Sarah insists that she wasn’t in control. She thinks she was hacked. Bionic people can be hacked? Brilliant! This was the most intriguing part of the show. I can’t wait to learn more about this.

Back in Paradise, with her bionic hearing Jamie discovers a lone survivor, a teenage girl. Ruth waves a gun in the girl’s face. Jamie calls off the dog and takes the girl under her wing. The girl says she noticed a weird, gas truck circling the town the night before. In mid-conversation a desert fatigued team approaches and opens fire on them. They evade for a while but Jamie eventually gets broken-in by having to fight one of the soldiers. She is victorious but more of the soldiers are coming for them. Ruth rigs a grenade and it explodes, killing most of the soldiers. One of the soldiers lived and is positioned to shoot the women. Antonio and the Wolf Creek team show up to save the day. That lone soldier was captured and interrogated. Without having to witness the torture, Antonio says that the rogue agency had 20 trucks and were going to hit 20 different major cities. The captured soldier also gave up the location of the rogue facility. The Wolf Creek team made an easy bust with no resistance and everything was right as rain. It was almost too easy.

It gets better. Jamie goes to her sisters talent show in which her sister is doing some horrific country and western number that we didn’t get to hear. Thank the heavens. I guess it was so bad that they decided to play a track over it and not have it lip-synced? I didn’t understand what was going on. I guess that wasn’t the point of the scene. The point was that Jamie and Becca made up. Jamie insisted that Becca could stay, they hugged, did not cry and walked off into the night. I feel warm and fuzzy.

The good: Will Anthos had a dossier that dated two years before he met Jamie. It looks like she’s been a candidate for quite sometime. I’d like to know more about that. Sarah Corvus suspects that she killed 14 agents because she was hacked. I want to see Jamie get hacked.

The bad: There are some emoting and dialogue issues with Michelle Ryan. It is more apparent at the beginning of the episode.

The ugly:Painkiller Jane’s Kristanna Loken’s would be a better Bionic Woman. The two actresses should swap shows.

3 Responses

Michele Ryan is very bland. After two episodes many people wish Katie Sackhoff had the lead role. Katie Sackhoff energizes every scene she’s in, while Ryan pulls the scenes down with her low-energy persona.

The show had continuity problems. Why would Will die from a shoulder wound, if Wolf Creek Biotech was on the scene right away? Jonas Bledsoe claimed that Wolf Creek could have cured his terminally-ill wife, so Wolf Creek could have easily saved Will’s life. How is it possible that Jaime Somers can get drunk at all, let alone have a hangover, with her system full of those healing nanocytes? Why didn’t that enemy soldier’s head crack like an old pumpkin from just one smack of Jaime’s nuclear-pile-driver fist? How can Jaime be gone for days at a time, without needing to tell her sister at least something, like, “I got a security job with the government through my late boyfriend, so that’s where I am, keep it to yourself”? There is no background to suggest that Jaime was the sort of young woman who would throw herself at a man — she was unbelieving of Will’s interest in her to begin with — so why would she throw herself sluttishly at a total stranger? Does Jaime not grieve over the loss of her unborn baby, or is that just a cheap plot-point now thrown away?

Lastly, the action wasn’t exciting or suspenseful. The antagonists were lame. That old battle between Steve Austin and Bigfoot (Andre the Giant in a zippered monster outfit) was more fun and exciting to watch — mostly because Andre the Giant was actually that big in real life, so watching him tower over Lee Majors and toss him around like a dolly was cool. There was no pleased “Whoaaah, look at that!” moment in this show.

I share a lot of the disappointment that Jack is referring to. I also agree that Michelle Ryan is bland. Most of that feeling comes from the third episode.

However, unlike a lot of people, I’m not a huge fan of Katee Sackoff. She definitely adds more intensity to her role than Michelle Ryan adds to hers, but I’m a little tired of seeing Katee playing the rough and rebellious type.

I want to like the show, and I want to like the main character. But, I feel like the writing is not up to par yet. Specifically in the second episode, I felt like the plot was just kind of boring.

Oh, and as far as continuity problems, has anyone been able to figure out how Sarah Corvus could know exactly where Jaime’s boyfriend’s car would be on the road so she could hit them with a truck from a perpendicular road at the exact right moment and at a very high speed? I’m still trying to figure out how any person, bionic or not, could pull off such an event with that many parameters.

@Jack Brooks: I’m afraid that you are too overqualified to watch this show. LOL!

@Umberhaven: Shut yer mouth! Katee Sackhoff is great! She’s the only reason that I can continue watching this show. As far as Sarah Corvus being able to pull off a wreck like that? Crazy people are clever especially when obsessed.